![Book cover](/media-u4/1543780/abbess-crewe-500h.jpg)
The cover of Muriel Spark's 1974 novel 'The Abbess of Crewe'.
This book is a wonderfully reductive comic distillation of the Watergate scandal, imaginatively transfigured to a convent in Cheshire.
In 1970, Spark met Mrs Pat Nixon, First Lady and wife of U.S. President Richard, at the Grand Hotel in Rome.